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Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Facebook status updates part XXIII (Mar 2014)

“Fall
in love? My dear boy, no poet has ever done that. One should rise in
love if one is to do anything at all.”

Whenever anyone asked how Mister
Anthony could sell afterlife insurance, he just smiled and said he
hadn't had any complaints so far.

Six-word story:I keep forgetting to
hate you.

There was a plot twist. They happen
every so often in our lives.One happened to you today, though you
might never know it.I wish I could say it involved me.

The cemetery cut off the city a little
but was the usual rush of students using the walking path as a
shortcut to school. A few waved; I waved back, said hello to a few
classmates as we walked. Qirjin fell silent and said nothing to
them.I let his silence stand.Part of me wanted to tell him he
didn’t need to be shy, but I didn’t know him enough to know what
he needed.

Coworker: dream catchers are good; you
can put them in a child's bedroom and they won't have nightmares.Me:
They'd be good for older kids too. You could have a wet dream
catcher..... Don't you wish you worked with me?!

I harbour a deep suspicion that, for
any author, hell would be a time machine and seeing what people do
with their properties in the future.

From notes files to current WIP:I
think Romeo and Juliet would have been a worse tragedy if they had
married

Writing joys of the weekend:*
Realizing I didn’t have to change the time Alcoholics Anonymous was
founded. 1935 is more than old one enough for my story, thankfully.*
researching food labelling regulations in Iran (or trying to)*
checking out child labour laws in north america regarding kids
working in their parents store.It says much about me that in a
stories with djinn who grant wishes and dream-worlds with trees as
big as mountains, whether one character is being paid adequately by
her parents for working at their store isa) in need of
researchand b) see a.

*looks up from writing*I watched
some game shows, and some reality TV program. CSI: Thickos, or
something like that. Take various crimes, and have ordinary people
examine the clues and try and figure out what happened, with
ex-police officers doing scathing voice-over.... this might,
actually, not be that bad an idea for a show

In two days I have (so far) written
over 500 words toward the current WIP. During breaks at work. In the
notes section of my iPhone. I think this story is consuming my brain.

'Justice Dept. applies same-sex rights
to itself'*eyes headline*... there are so many ways to read
that.

This weekend's novel research:* the
history of the saturday morning cartoon. (For the curious, it pretty
much doesn't exist anymore.)* whether the phrase "high-scent
jobs" exists, even if it made perfect sense for the one
character to say. (It doesn't exist, per-se, but I'm using it
anyway.)* reliability of internet connectivity in Iran.
(Throttled.)

Someone pointed out to me that they
were 3 months behind on reading stories I'd written. At which point I
sat down and did the mental math for last year. From June-Dec I wrote
2 short stories every week. On top of that: 2 novellas and 2 novel
drafts..... that is a wee bit insane.

According to my dreams, Dolly Parton is
a) not human and b) helps run a school that teaches non-humans how to
integrate in human society.... Consider
this exhibit A as to why I don't get story ideas from dreams.

Heartsache is it real;Pain is not a
poem.

“If
some part of me didn’t hate you, there would be no part of me that
was not sane.”

Conversations
with an immortal:

"What
is your biggest regret in living so long a life?"

"I
have seen bellbottoms come back into style." A pause. "Four
times."

my
notebooks are full of fragments

poems
begun, half-done

and
lost

Secrets my heart holds (a journal for a
novel character)- We learn anger from the words of our parents; I
am terrified of my own.- I feel like a secret everyone believes
they have not cracked; the traditions of the gifted are shroud and
armour both.- Anyone we trust could destroy us. But the walls we
build are prisons.- The more we hide, the more I hunger for
something more.- I am scared at how easily this list came to me.

The dream that seeks a dreamer
huntinghinting me down like a poem or storythe play
unrehearsed lines in foreign tonguesThe hanged man becomes the
drowning oneI am drowning in an ocean I wish was LetheThere
is something that is too brightThere are no shades I do not cast

Signs it is time to stop writing and
sleep include writing the following:I stumbled out of bed and
into the kitchen in my boxers to find Dad drinking the paper and
reading coffee

"You are actually building a black
hole generator and putting out a press release on how it has a 3%
chance to destroy the world?""Of course. The Large
Hadron Collider entirely failed in its goal, you see.""What?"
the interviewer said."Doctor Who didn't arrive to save us. I
think we have the odds figured out better this time."

I would say I am sorry for your
sorrowBut you have such gentle tears

There
are so many reasons for the dead to hate the living: wills are only a
small part of that.

You
licked my wounds clean

Your
tongue sandpaper-soft

"I
am running out of words to bookend our silences with."

"You
think you’re so clever, don’t you?" was spat from the other
chair.

Eyes
traverse the dull cracked walls and grimed kitchen. “I wish I was.
Some days I truly wish I was.”

A description of my current WIP … as
given to a friend:It was mostly me wondering about Chosen Ones
and the notion that, if it is hard to be one, then it is surely
harder to love one, to befriend them, to know they are going to go
places where you can’t follow and all you can do is wait….

Yesterday at work:Manager: "So,
that customer said you were rude to them."Me: "I
wasn't. What I wanted to say to them WAS rude, so whatever I said
wasn't rude at all."

I even paid attention to Mrs Thompson,
who had decided to tell the class that in every person was the ruin
of a great teacher, and how one only had to look at the teachings of
Jesus to understand that. For a moment, I thought I caught a hint of
some hint of a plan to her lessons: no one so much as looked shocked,
because it was Mrs. Thompson and she always said crazy things. Then
she went off on a tangent about how multiple choice tests didn’t
work and how they destroyed the foundations of democratic systems.
Even I tuned her out after that...... I have far, far too much
writing this character.

"It’s over," I said,
because I was too scared it might not be.

The prophecy had said that he would die
in battle — but he had expected a war, not this racking cough he
could not shake. Not the mounting pity in others’ eyes.

I had a blank page to fill in a
notebook. I didn't write about you.I guess this means it's over.

I can't seem to work my fistsPunched
walls until fingers brokeTo distract me from your pain

After the divorce: six words of
horror"I misfiled your taxes for five years."

"We do not inherit the earth from
our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” He smiled about the
boardroom. “This, of course, means we are leasing it from them at a
rather enviable rate.”

Signs the third novel in a series is
going to be odd:The main character will be captured by the
military so that they can weaponize his digestive system.

End of a flash fiction piece:“Ah,
yes.” The One cut him off, causing a murmur from both sides.
“Science will save us, because it has always done so. Because each
time we were about to fall, someone built a bridge. That cannot go on
forever. Every sign says this is a dead-end road but no one believes.
Such is the power of science, such the strength of the promise. Do
you not wonder at that?” the One continued, softer still. “If we
did not have this hope, we would be forced to make due with less. We
would pull back. We would entrench and put reign on the drives of
growth.”“We will be undone by hope?” the Other said, but
his laugh cut off as the One merely nodded.

My uncle used to tell me bedtime
stories to help me sleep. Like how the wise slept deeply, or how one
could find the true meaning of anything only in stories. And he would
punctuate each story by falling asleep in the middle of it. It was
almost twenty years before I found out what narcolepsy was.

I don’t want to write these words
that keep falling into me like bruises

I don’t want to write these words
that keep falling into me like bruises

My brother wants people to leave time
and date on his voicemail. He got this:"It is September 19.
The year is 2053. It is the end. You were right. It is the end."

All I can boast of is the illusion of
movement.

Pondering whether I can really call
Ghoulish Happenings a YA novel when the MC is heading off to eat the
corpse of a police officer. Mind you, the officer has asked him to,
but even so.

Note to self: some day, I must write
'The Wolf Who Cried Boy'

"I'm so boring," he said.
"You don't understand: I don't even have a single fetish."

The bedtime stories were one thing; one
expected old ladies babysitting to offer those. The morning stories
were a surprise of gleaming teeth and bright eyes glittering in the
dawn.

“Good morning! The sun is out, you
are nice and plump after winter and spring makes for such rosy
cheeks!”

No one was sure how old Ms. Wilkins had
got in during the morning without setting off the alarm, but the
police took her away and mom and dad refused to talk about her ever
again.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”